5 Movies That Were Supposed to Win Oscar for Best Picture, but Never Did

There’s still nothing bigger for any cinema worker to dream about than seeing their name among nominees at an Oscar ceremony, even though the Academy has been long considered, well, quite unreliable sometimes when it comes to making fair decisions.

With time, the most desired statuette has become a subject of thorough calculations rather than just another way to test your intuition, but even numbers were repeatedly proven wrong when the Best Picture winner would turn out to be not the one everyone expected to take the award.

This year’s ceremony that took place just last night isn’t an exception either, and its biggest triumpher has just joined a long list of movies whose major win shocked everyone.

Quiz Show (1994)

Starring this year’s Best Actor nominee Ralph Fiennes, the movie wasn’t quite something that would remain in the Academy’s history as a solid and non-aging contender, but it was still considered better than that year’s actual Best Picture winner Forrest Gump.

In fact, the 1995 ceremony couldn’t compete in its intrigue with any other, colliding such truly iconic films as Four Weddings and a Funeral, Pulp Fiction and The Shawshank Redemption in the main category.

No wonder everyone got disappointed yet another time when the Oscar went to the most doubtful nominee.

Saving Private Ryan (1998)

Steven Spielberg ’s masterpiece was reasonably expected to sweep the Oscars at the 1999 ceremony, but once again proved the Academy’s tendency to fail big when Shakespeare in Love took home the main prize.

Such an outcome led to many controversies that suggested the winning movie’s co-producer Harvey Weinstein had played a key role, all the while being infamous for competing in the most harsh ways for the prestigious awards for his films.

The Pianist (2002)

Adrien Brody has triumphed twice in the Best Actor category, though both of his movies fell victim to the Academy’s weird choices.

At the 2003 ceremony, the Renée Zellweger-led musical Chicago won Best Picture alongside a couple more statuettes, yet it was Roman Polanski’s heart-shattering war drama that had everyone talking.

The movie proved Brody’s Oscar-worthiness as it saw the actor taking on a challenging role that would later on lead to his long-standing struggles with PTSD.

Juno (2008)

Jason Rateman’s coming-of-age comedy was one of the groundbreaking points in the cinema of the 2010s that finally brought teen drama to a higher and more serious level. The movie received 4 Oscar nods, including for Best Picture, but eventually lost to the Coen brothers' thriller No Country For Old Men.

Despite competing with some other solid contenders like Atonement and There Will Be Blood, Juno still received more love from both critics and viewers, holding scores of 93% and 88% respectively on Rotten Tomatoes.

The Brutalist (2024)

Brady Corbet’s monumental period drama, The Brutalist had the highest chances to take home the main prize after all, but the statuette was eventually given to Sean Baker’s Anora, making the latter the biggest triumpher at the March 2 ceremony.

The movie still made some history though, bringing Adrien Brody his second Oscar win after the second nomination, though many might argue that the film did deserve better.